Innovative tips and tricks to help you get flat abs, lose body fat, fight aging & live a healthier life. I'll even cover controversial topics that mainstream health "experts" don't understand about nutrition...the TRUTH about cholesterol & saturated fat, carbs, protein, and even superfoods you may have never heard of!

Sunday

3 artificial-sounding ingredients that are actually healthy

As you've read in several of my past newsletters, you want to be on the
lookout for hidden ingredients in your foods such as MSG or trans fats
that can be causing weight gain or other health problems.

However,
I've noticed that sometimes people think that just because a label
contains an odd-sounding ingredient, that it must be harmful. This is
NOT always the case. Check out these examples of artificial-sounding
ingredients that are actually natural, and even healthful...

3 Odd-Sounding ingredients that are actually okay:

1.
Xanthan Gum -- Despite the artificial-sounding name, this is actually
naturally produced from fermentation of a type of bacterium called
Xanthomonas campestris, and acts as a type of soluble fiber in our
digestion. Xanthan gum is used as a type of thickener or gel agent in
various types of foods and is basically harmless, while adding just a
slight fiber boost to certain foods.

2.
Alginate -- This is another artificial-sounding ingredient you'll
sometimes see on labels that's actually natural and even healthful.
It's derived naturally from seaweed and serves as a thickener in certain
types of foods. Alginate has been linked to improving cholesterol
levels and possibly even helping to control appetite. This is yet
another odd-sounding ingredient not to worry about.

The longer I've been in the healthcare industry, the more I realize that a 'balanced body' is the key to just about any health goal you might have. Whether you want to lose weight, reduce bodyfat, build muscle, or increase athleticism, the faster you balance your body the quicker you'll see results.

The first step is to balance your 'Macronutrient Ratio,' which is just a fancy way of saying that you have to balance the amount of carbs:proteins:fats you consume.

Here's a simple rule that I like to follow, as a general theme to healthy eating and high energy output:

9 grams of carbs: 7 grams protein: 4 grams fat

Assuming you're eating a large amount of veggies, that means a good portion of those carbs will be indigestible fiber, and the caloric ratio will end up almost equally balanced between slow carbs, protein, and healthy fats.

Next, consider the 'Nutrient Density' in everything you eat. Not all calories were created equally, not even from the same macronutrient classification or category. Eating animal fats usually means more dietary cholesterol, but this isn't necessarily a problem like most people think...

Cholesterol is actually normal and healthy for your body -- it's something your body naturally produces because it's required to sustain life. However, inflammation combined with high levels of LDL cholesterol can result in a very dangerous situation.

If you eat sugar, you're inflaming. If you eat cookies, crackers,bread, cereal, or estrogenic products like soy and non-organic fruits and vegetables (pesticides are estrogenic), you're inflaming.

Ultimately, this means that your body will have a harder time processing the carbs it consumes. Your body's relationship with a normal macronutrient changes, and it will affect you differently.

If you have a lot of inflammation in your body, fix this first, then adjust your diet for increased nutrient density. Get rid of any trans fats, most of the grains you consume, and any food category that you're particularly sensitive to. Alongside, take a careful look at your environment -- if you are in a stressed-out situation, take time each day to calm your mind through meditation, positive self-talk, and visualization of happier circumstances. I recommend at least 15-20 minutes, as this seems to be an accepted time by HeartMath.org, which is the leading organization for battling depression through natural means.

Once you address the inflammation in your body, you can hone in on eating the "right" foods, even if they have things like cholesterol in them that scares you. Now its time for the grass-fed beef, free range organic chickens, and the eggs they produce (yolks included!)

Last, but certainly not least, it's important you balance your micronutrients and hydration. These are the 'invisible' aspects of your daily health rituals that need to exist. Hydration is pretty easy, unless you have some extreme reason for dehydration -- just drink half your bodyweight (pounds) in ounces of water each day.

Micronutrients, on the other hand, are an uphill battle. To derive all of the micronutrients your body needs simply from the food you consume is very difficult. For example, you'd have to eat a variety of about 25 different fruits and vegetables, but just small pieces of each one. This is how you'd get the proper mineral balance, natural vitamins (not artificial), and antioxidants you need for optimal health.

In addition, the health of your digestive tract determines how well your body will respond to any of the information above. Digestive enzymes that target ease of digestion and enzyme release specifically designed to break up difficult to digest substances, can make a game-changing difference in the balance of your overall health.

Again, you can do a lot for your gut by consuming 'probiotics' in the form of plain (non-sweetened) kefir and yogurt, and strengthen your digestive tract significantly. However, this is only part of the equation, and it would have to be daily habit.

For the fastest and most reliable (daily) solution to micronutrients, digestive enzymes, probiotics, and electrolyte balance, I simplify my life with a unique smoothie each morning (actually, my wife makes it for me -- she's awesome!) -here's exactly what goes in this daily digestive system healing smoothie:

Monday

Red wine and your gut?

You've probably heard that red wine can be a very healthy drink option,
but you most likely only heard about generic benefits of the
antioxidants and resveratrol in red wine.

But here's another
MAJOR reason below why red wine in moderation (1-2 glasses per day max)
can be a super healthy part of your routine. I personally have really
grown to enjoy having a glass of red wine with dinner about 4-5 days per
week.

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
(Am J Clin Nutr. 2012;95:1323-1334) reported that people who drank 2
glasses of red wine per day (dry red wine, not sugary dessert wines) had
higher levels of beneficial bacteria in their gut and lower levels of
pathogenic bad bacteria in their gut. This is great news as you know
from reading this newsletter how vastly important your gut flora balance
is to everything from your digestion, immunity, metabolism, skin
health, and much more.

The study concluded that while red wine
consumption decreased pathogenic bacteria in the gut, it actually had a
prebiotic effect in the gut in that it supported the growth and colonies
of healthy gut microbes which protect your health.

But the powerful health benefits of red wine don't stop there...

Another
exciting part of this study is that the red wine drinkers also
decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure, triglycerides, LDL
cholesterol, and CRP (C-reactive protein). CRP is a measure of overall
inflammation in your body, so it's great to see an association between
red wine and reduced inflammation.

The interesting part of the
study is that red wine was compared against equivalent servings of gin
(equivalent alcohol serving) and none of the benefits mentioned above
were seen in the group consuming the gin. This means the benefits were
probably related to the polyphenols and resveratrol in red wine and not
necessarily the alcohol content itself, although there is likely a
synergistic effect of the alcohol and other compounds in red wine as the
group receiving de-alcoholized red wine got less of a blood pressure
benefit.

You can choose Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Shiraz or
any other dry red wine to get all of these powerful health benefits of
the unique polyphenols and resveratrol.

Note that white wine also has some health benefits but not nearly as powerful as red wine due to the lower antioxidant levels.

Another
benefit of red wine not mentioned in the study above is that I've seen
studies that show that red wine consumed with a meal can slow and
moderate the blood sugar response you get from that meal. This is yet
another benefit to keeping your hormones balanced, controlling insulin
levels, controlling appetite, and staying lean!

As you can see, there's plenty of reasons raise a glass of red wine at your meals and toast to your health and happiness!

But beware...

As
good as red wine is for your health and gut microbes, there are plenty
of things that can DESTROY your beneficial gut flora...

Antibiotics
(over-prescribed, often unnecessarily) are one thing that can destroy
your gut flora balance and have huge ramifications for your health. In
addition, too much sugar in your diet can increase the growth of bad
bacteria, and using the artificial sweetener sucralose can KILL-off
portions of your beneficial bacteria, destroying your health in the
process.

My colleague Brett Hall also shares with you in the video below other dangers that can destroy your gut health...

Wednesday

Never eat these TOXIC protein bars or energy bars

Let's face it... most protein bars or "energy" bars are TERRIBLE for your health while pretending to be healthy.

First, most protein bars are nothing more than glorified candy bars.

In
most stores, I find it almost IMPOSSIBLE to find a truly healthy bar to
buy for snacks for road trips, flights, hiking excursions, or just to
have quick mid day snacks available for work days.

Here are 3 major issues I see with MOST bars:

1.
Most bars have WAY too much sugar and total carbs and not enough
protein or fiber. These ratios of protein, sugar, and fiber is the
first thing I search for when looking at labels, and almost EVERY bar I
see at most stores is totally out of whack and a blood sugar nightmare
waiting to happen.

This is where most bars actually make you
hungrier in the hours after you eat them, and cause weight gain from
hormonal and blood sugar disruptions too.

Unfortunately, most bars that attempt to be lower in sugar use dangerous artificial sweeteners instead.

2.
It's almost impossible to find protein bars that don't use soy protein
as the main protein source. Soy protein is horrendous for your health,
and something I try to avoid, but most bars contain it because it's the
cheapest protein source available. Remember that most soy protein also
originated from genetically modified soy, which some animal studies are
showing causes extreme digestive system inflammation and possible
tumors.

3. Most bars don't contain enough
healthy fats... they either try to be too low-fat overall (making them
not satisfying for your appetite), or the fats that they do contain are
highly processed omega-6 fats or even trans fats in some cases that I've
seen.

While most bars are positioned as “healthy,” these fat
loss–and health-derailing nightmares are full of simple sugars, damaged
and denatured fats, dirt-cheap and unhealthy protein, and usually a slew
of artificial colors, dangerous sweeteners, and preservatives.

Just
take a look at the labels on these supposed “health bars” and you’ll
likely see ingredients like partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats),
safflower oil or other inflammatory omega-6 oils, corn syrup, corn
starch, high fructose corn syrup (from GM corn), sugar, brown sugar,
fructose (even worse than sugar for your blood chemistry), maltodextrin
and dextrose (carbohydrates whose glycemic index is even higher than
sugar!), canola oil (and you might know that canola oil is terrible for you), sucralose and aspartame (which are chemical, artificial sweeteners, possibly linked to cancer and sucralose is shown to damage your gut flora), and the list goes on and on.

In
reality, these “obesity additives” are some of the worst things you can
put in your body if your goal is to achieve a flat belly and improve
your health. Not only can they wreak havoc on your blood sugar,
hormones, and cardiovascular risk factors, but they can outright STOP
fat loss dead in its tracks, leaving you wondering why, despite all your
efforts to eat healthy, your body fat stores just won’t seem to budge.

This brings us to another very important point to consider when choosing a protein bar: protein quality.

You see, the #1 protein source used in most protein bars is soy protein, one of the cheapest protein sources in the world.

Do
you think that’s a coincidence? Not a chance! Unfortunately, soy
protein contains BOTH phytoestrogens and xenoestrogens that act like
estrogen in the body and have been linked to numerous health problems,
including decreased thyroid output in women and decreased testosterone
levels in men.

This is really bad news, because less thyroid
hormone means less calorie burning and more fat storage for you. And
low testosterone for men can make it impossible to build any strength or
muscle and lose any fat, among other major problems that Low T causes
for men.

That’s more fiber than a FiberOne® bar, which has barely any protein at all and has too much sugar.

Not
only that, but BioTrust Organic Protein Bars are officially the FIRST
Organic Protein Bar in the entire industry made with organic whey
protein. They also contains organic rice protein and organic pea
protein making for a unique combination of high quality proteins without
any harmful cheap soy protein!

But what about the taste?

Well,
you’ll be happy to know that BioTrust Organic Protein Bars taste
absolutely incredible... in fact, I just enjoyed one of these new bars
with a cup of tea earlier today and they taste like choc chip cookie
dough in my opinion!

While being made up of a very short list of
ultra-high-quality organic ingredients unlike other bars that have to
resort to a mile-long list of health–and fat-loss-sabotaging fillers to
even make their “frankenfood” protein bar creations edible.

In
fact, each BioTrust Organic Protein Bar is a healthy, ultra-convenient,
and completely balanced meal that boasts an ideal blend of low-glycemic
organic carbohydrates and an array of healthy fats to compliment the 20
grams of organic protein and 14 grams of fiber contained in each bar.

What about the sweeteners used?

These
new Organic Protein Bars use a mixture of organic stevia and organic
honey for the sweetener, which is perfect in my opinion.

With
this mixture, these bars are lower in sugar than most bars, but the
sugar that they do contain is derived from healthy organic honey which
contains unique antioxidants not found in other sugar sources. And
combined with the massive 14 grams of fiber and 20 grams of protein, you
end up with a snack or small meal that's very low in glycemic response
helping to keep your blood sugar balanced.

This means you REDUCE your cravings and keep a fat-burning environment humming along inside your body!

The
truth is, you can’t even buy a fattening dollar menu meal consisting of
unappetizing mystery meat, soggy fries, and a flat soda for the same
low price as these organic protein bars which make a much healthier and
quick meal alternative for on-the-go.

Even more, you’ll pay an
even higher price for many of the low-quality, TOXIC protein bars at
your local convenience store than you will for a premium BioTrust
Organic Protein Bar containing all-natural organic ingredients and
top-grade organic protein, fiber, and healthy fats.

To begin
experiencing just how easy it is to eat healthy and lose flab when you
always have convenient, organic, great-tasting nutrition at your
fingertips for on-the-go, simply tap the link below and select your
money-saving package while using the coupon code "organic" at checkout
to receive FREE shipping on your order...

Again, the coupon code to receive FREE shipping on your order is -- organic

Don’t
fall victim any longer to making poor food choices due to your busy
lifestyle. Instead, use these Organic Protein Bars any time you need
delicious and nutritious snacks or meal replacements in your busy days.

Tuesday

This exercise boosts your metabolism for 38 hours (3 studies)

If you've been following my newsletters for a while, then you know that SHORT, intense exercise is by far the best fat-burning exercise you can perform...

In
fact, it's been proven to result in up to NINE times faster fat loss...
and here are a few research studies that show just how powerful it is
compared to long slow cardio...

Keep in mind that intensity is
relative to each person's current fitness level... so "short and
intense" can mean something totally different to someone who is possibly
older and/or out of shape, compared to someone who is already in good
shape.

The Research on SHORT, intense workouts:

As
mentioned in several previous articles, "slow and long" cardio is OLD
news and extremely ineffective when compared to short-burst intense
exercise, and here are a few of studies to support this that my
colleague Alwyn Cosgrove passed along:

In this study a 30-minute circuit style resistance training session was put to the test. The result was a 38 hour increase in metabolism – massive AFTERBURN.

Let’s put this in perspective: Say that you worked out at 8AM on Friday.
By way of short-burst, intense exercise, you’d still be burning extra
calories from that workout (above and beyond your normal metabolic rate)
while out at the movies on Saturday night.

This
study compared “slow and long” aerobic exercise to short burst intense
resistance training and found that the resistance group lost
significantly more fat without losing ANY lean muscle even at an
extremely low calorie intake (not so for the aerobic group).

In fact, believe it or not, while the aerobic group experienced a decrease in metabolism (and lost muscle), the resistance training group actually increased their overall metabolic rate.

THAT’S
the power of short-burst resistance training, and it doesn't require as
much work as you might think. In fact, in terms of duration of
exercise each week, this method is no more than 90 minutes of exercise
in an ENTIRE week, as opposed to some people who you see pumping away
laboriously on treadmills and exercise bikes for 90 minutes per day,
totally wasting their time, as their body never seems to change.

My friend and colleague Steve Holman is an expert in this area and shows you exactly how to put this method to use here:

Thursday

Amazing healthy dessert or snack recipe (so delicious!)

A couple months ago, I sent you a really tasty new healthy dessert/snack recipe that we called Danette's healthy balls. You can see the original recipe on that page. Super simple and tasty.

Well,
after experimenting with this recipe a few times, I've made a few
modifications to it that lower the overall carbs while increasing the
healthy fats and fiber in order to lower the glycemic response from this
recipe.

The existing recipe with the oats is okay for highly
active people that workout hard and can utilize the carbs from the oats
well. And oats are one of the more "neutral" grains that have less
antinutrient problems compared to wheat or corn.

But I still
wanted to modify these healthy cookie dough balls for our own batches to
be lower in carbs for a lower blood sugar response since I use these
mostly in the evenings for dessert each night.

So what I did was
replace the oats in the recipe with hazelnut flour, although any nut
flour will work well too. Since the basis of the recipe is a jar of
almond butter, I chose to use hazelnut flour instead of using almond
flour and almond butter. That way, you diversify the fatty acid profile
and the vitamin/mineral profile from 2 types of nuts instead of only
one type. You can also add chopped pecans and walnuts for more variety.

If
you choose to use peanut butter as the base of the recipe, you can use
almond flour (which is easier to find than hazelnut flour), and that
way, you still get a more diverse nutrient profile from the 2 types of
nuts instead of just one.

I also added some other bells and
whistles to this modified version to add more healthy fats and fiber.
Notably, I added coconut milk instead of water, and also added a 1/3 cup
of chia seed for extra fiber and vitamins/minerals.

I also used
1/4 cup real maple syrup instead of the 1/4 cup honey. This was mainly
because raw honey is generally solid and doesn't mix well, so real maple
syrup worked better for me in order to mix everything together.

Oh,
and I also added some cocoa powder, dark choc chips, and some pure
cacao nibs for the extra taste and nutrition benefits of the various
forms of cocoa.

Here's the new version below which I just made 2
days ago and is the BEST batch I've made yet. These things are
deeee-lish! My dad even made a batch of these recently and said he
looks forward to having a few of these little gems with a cup of tea
every single day as a mid day snack or dessert.

The ratio of
sugar in these is very low since the majority of the recipe consists of
healthy fats, protein, and fiber. The only real carb source is the
maple syrup and it's only 1/4 cup in the whole recipe, but the amount of
balls this makes will last you at least a week.

Mix
all ingredients together in a large bowl and continue to mash together
with a large spoon for a few minutes until everything seems well mixed
together. Roll into 1 inch balls and lay out on plates or waxed paper
to put in the freezer (they need to be separate so they don't freeze
together). Once frozen, you can transfer all the balls to a tupperware
container to keep in the freezer until any time you want a healthy sweet
treat!

Try these and you'll be BLOWN AWAY at how good these are!

Remember
to make sure that you grab our new healthy anti-aging recipe manual
that Catherine Ebeling and I have co-authored below: